TBBT 6x06: The Extract Obliteration

Sheldon invites Stephen Hawking to play Words with Friends with him, and he accepts. In his mind, this makes the two of them friends, which is one of the things he's wanted since he was six years old. Unfortunately, Hawking's skills with physics don't transfer over to word games, and Sheldon kicks his butt... which is hard because he's always sitting down. Anyway, Hawking's a big baby and he doesn't like to lose, so he goes several days without making a move, so Sheldon resorts to Jedi mind trickery to get him to play.

It doesn't work because Hawking is a Sith Lord.

Meanwhile, Penny is taking a history class at the local community college. She doesn't want to tell Leonard, though, because she thinks he'll make a big deal out of it. Amy and Bernadette somewhat obliquely convince her she should tell her boyfriend about the interesting developments in her life, though. When she does, he starts to make a big deal out of it. Penny's not big on history, but she knows about relationships. While she's sleeping, he sneaks out of bed to take a look at her first paper. It's not good.

It's astonishing how many professors read papers in their underwear at 3am.

Leonard and Sheldon try to talk to each other about their problems, but it doesn't work out, so they have to solve them on their own. Attempting to emulate the story of the Shoemaker and the Elves, Leonard rewrites Penny's paper. She's not cool with that, and she storms off. A few days later, she knocks on his door to rub her B- in his face. Of course, she neglects to tell him that she only got that grade because she got Bernadette and Amy to help her.

Then she got tough with them so they'd get her a better grade next time.

Sheldon's problem is far easier to solve: he throws the game. Then Stephen Hawking calls him to gloat.

What I Liked
-Leonard finally gets to nail a college girl. It's every man's dream. Although, he does work at a university, so it should be pretty easy for him to get a couple physics groupies.
-Raj and Howard do each other's accents using pretty racist dialogue. In the future, I shall refer to all the white people I know from the US as my "snow white American friends"
-Hawking's not cool with "Wheels" but he's fine with the nickname "Rolling Thunder". They got him to do his voice in the episode, so I wonder if they actually asked him which nickname he'd like. I hope so.
-They got Stephen Hawking to say "Neener-neener".

When nerds tease each other, does that count as bullying?

What I Hated
-Just as Raj is saying he's kicking butt at Kinect Star Wars: Galactic Dance-off, Kunal Nayyar blows a move. There's so very much wrong with that scene that I can understand if they wanted to get through it as fast as possible, but they could've done another take.
-Penny cooks Leonard some spaghetti that he describes as 'crunchy'. The noodles they're eating are clearly not crunchy. When you make a joke based on the properties of a physical object, that object needs to actually have those properties. It's like Leonard making a joke about how short Sheldon is.

Final Thoughts
They're certainly making it hard to like Penny. Sure, she's kinda cute, but she's stupid, she's mean, she's emotionally unstable, and she's a liar. Not that I have a problem with lying, but she deliberately goes out of her way to show off how wrong Leonard was about her, and even insults him, but in truth, he was absolutely correct. There's just nothing to like about her.

I got 21 laughs out of it, so I found this episode just as funny as I did the previous one, but I really didn't like it that much. This show needs less Penny and more Captain Sweatpants!